


Rockin' and rollin'

by ClaraCivry (Kat_Of_Dresden)



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Apocalypse - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst, Music, Pining, Rock Band AU, Swearing, cos Warren is mostly the narrator, friendship???, nothing else really, pre gig angst, song lyric discussion, you know Jubilee and Kurt would make the weirdest music, you know he swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-24 21:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7523542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Of_Dresden/pseuds/ClaraCivry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rock band AU</p><p>Punk's not dead and neither is Warren Worthington III</p><p> Chap 1. Warren's metal band and Kurt's weird indie band are both opening for Charles' legendary classic rock in a gig. They find each other in the dressing rooms. There's bad blood, but maybe it doesn't run as deep as they thought, maybe they don't each other as much they are supposed to.</p><p>Chap 2. Warren is having trouble while trying to compose a song in a bar. Kurt offers some help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Horsemen would sound a bit like Ghost (look up Monstrance clock) and the Xkids New Heroics band should sound a bit like Late of the Pier (look up Late of the Pier - Blueberry)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

They were getting ready for the gig, nervous as fuck. Specially Warren, flapping his white wings everywhere, checking his guitar every twenty seconds. They were opening for the X experience, Charles' band, which was a huge deal because they were a legend and a lot of people who listened to good music were going to be there and this could be huge and they couldn't fuck it up. Sure, there were other two openers (and what kind of band had three bands open for them? Fucking Charles trying to help eeeeevery mutant rock band by giving them a space before them) and they were the ones in the middle, so there probably wasn't everyone there, but what the hell, they needed to give it everything they got.

It turned out that they had to share the dressing rooms with the next opening band, and Warren's excitement and resolve turned to anger when he saw who was that had got the sweet spot after them, just before Xavier's band. Those fucking kids, teacher pets all of them. "New heroics" they called themselves. The bad thing was, they were quite good. Grey and specially Summers might have been boring as shit, but they were a good singer and guitarist, and Lee, Wagner and that idiot Maximoff were a fucking bomb, each on their own (her with her multicolour keyboard, Wagner in the violin and Maximoff shattering drum sets) and even more so together and mixing with instruments.

But they were good, too, Warren's band. They used to be called Horsemen and the Apocalypse, but the guy who found them and got them together and got them their first gigs, told them they would be greater than the world... one day that dude called them useless out of the blue and ditched them. And then Erik left too, uncomfortable being the only older guy playing with a bunch of kids, so it was now just Ororo on the drums, Psylocke on the bass and occasionally an organ (it gave the music the most ominous atmosphere). Whatever. It just had given them enough anger to write a whole album worth of angry songs. They were just Horsemen now, they were the next great doom metal band, weren't they?

Powerful, yet dark, angry but in an universal way, nearly overwhelming in their melancholia, in their anger and spite, in the force of their guitars, overpowering anything and everything else....With clear, straightforward lyrics about darkness and hell and the releasing a primal evil. Maybe it wasn't the most original concept, but they had talent, and people had noticed that they were good.

Problem was, Grey and the others kids' band were original. Well, more than original they were weird as fuck, but in a good kind of way. Alternative, psychedelic, new wave art rock... the names were prettier, and yet none of them could capture what it felt to hear them. They kinda lost themselves in their gigs, sometimes Jean exploded in red light, sometimes Kurt did a violin solo perched in one the ceiling lights. It really was an experience, as if you had taken some weird untested drugs.

Maybe that was what made Warren so angry, that they were good. They both had kind of niche audiences and really they should be helping each other out (how many mutant weird ass rock bands were there out there?) but something about them irked Warren very much, and Betsy wasn't too fond of them either. He didn't really know Ororo's opinion on the matter, but he imagined it was the same.

"Can you believe it? Those bullshitters are coming after us, they get the best spot before the main act! It's so unfair, so fucking unfair."

And then there was a breeze and a whisper in his ear.

"Hate will get you nowhere, birdboy."

"MAXIMOFFFFF!"

"Stop picking on them, Peter." A famale voice said from the entrance.

 _Sorry for Peter, he gets a bit... overexcited._ The same voice said in Warren's head, which was beyond creepy.

"Don't do that, Grey. It gets on my nerves."

Storm let out a small laugh.

"Everything get on you nerves, Warren. But can you try and not maim anyone before the concert? People need their limbs to play, you know?" She said behind him, while choosing her drumsticks. Deep down, Warren was a good guy. Problem was, you had to go really deep to find out.

The rest of the heroics came after, Scott being boring as usual with his shades and Kurt and Jubilee wearing impossibly colourful outfits and sharing a purple slurpie.

"Warren." Betsy said, coming to him. "I don't like this any more than you do, but let's to maintain some sort of... if not peace, tolerance."

Kurt smiled at them, with that innocent little grin of his and for some reason, that bothered him even more. Maybe it was the nerves, maybe it was that they hadn't played in too long, maybe that blue boy was more beautiful than he remembered... but he wanted to explode. 

"So I can't even complain when have to share the previous moments to one of the greatest gigs we've ever had, with a girl who could turn me into a vegetable with one thought," Jean just sighed "with that silver ball of annoying" pointing at Peter "the most dull human being on earth" pointing at Scott, who let out an indignant eeeh "a girl who likes effects more than she likes her lungs" Jubilee just smiled, because she did love using all the effects in her keyboard "and a boy who writes about religious feelings that conflict with mystic orgasms in outer space while playing an electric violin. Who the hell plays an electric violin?"

"I... do?"

"It was a rhetorical question, Kurt." Jean told him. 

"Oh." Kurt said, looking a bit crestfallen. "But why be angry with each other? Ororo is my friend."

"Storm!" Warren said, outraged.

"What, he's a nice kid!"

"And I do like your music." Kurt continued, looking at Warren with a dreamy smile. "It sounds like malevolent spirits haunting a darkened cathedral in the dead of night."

Part of Warren's anger dissipated at that. It was a cool description of their music, indeed. Sometimes he got angry and he didn't know at what, why he was so furious. Maybe it would be good to have someone calm around to counteract it, to soothe him. Him and Betsy had the tendency to feed each other's rage, and sometimes Ororo got caught in it. But he pretended he was still angry, of course. He had a reputation to uphold, most of all in front of his sworn enemies. 

Ororo was having none of it, though. 

“Grumpy wings also likes you guys, no matter what he says, I've seen him jamming to your last EP and, he specially seems fond of your lyrics.... In fact, I'm beginning to think there's maybe something else....”

“What?” Warren voice boomed and closed her in between his wings, trying to be threatening. 

“But we should let him come to terms with it on his own, probably. But one of these days, Warren, you'll have to admit it. You have feelings. Feelings beyond anger and disgust.” 

Warren narrowed his eyes at his drummer, but backed away. Maybe she had a point, but he would deal with it later. 

“So, is this a truce?” Said Jean, always the voice of reason. "We should concentrate on the music, on being our best selves tonight."

Storm nodded.

“Fine by me. Psylocke?”

Ororo was scared, because Warren may be swayed, but Betsy was more stubborn. If she agreed, she would agree for her friends, so she needed to use her more convincing eyes. 

“Fine.”

“Warren?”

“Ok... let's forget any bad blood for the night. It's a big night for both, but it's not a competition. Truce.”

“Then, ladies, gentlemen.... let's rock and roll!”

 


	2. Ultramarine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warren is having trouble composing a song.

Sometimes Warren drinks to forget, others he drinks because it's fun, other times he just drinks out of habit. Like this time, he's having some vodka while scribbling in a napkin their next greatest hit. It's fucking useless, his head is most definitely not in it. He's slept like two hours in total the previous night, it's almost midnight and he's been from one place to another the whole day. He hates having a day job, but the music doesn't give him enough money. Not yet at least.

The alcohol is helpful in some occasions, helps him focus, releases his craziest ideas, but this time it's only muddling his thoughts even more. His emotions are muddled too, he doesn't really know what he should be feeling as he continues to scribble on that used napkin. He wants to feel something else, something new, something -dare he say it- good, beyond the resentment for his father and his father's world, beyond the disgust for the humans that look at him different because of his mutation, beyond the hurt at Apocalypse's rude parting words.... It wasn't as inspiring and motivating as it used to be.

You didn't need to be unhappy or broody to do his kind of music, he knew, and he'd just been using the band as a crutch. Avoiding his real life pretending he was too focused on the band and trying to maintain his job. Warren didn't know where he fit in, he wasn't nice enough to support Xavier pacifist approach but couldn't condone the acts of Shaw and those like him. He felt himself in a middle ground, stuck, unable to move either way. And if he was honest, sometimes he felt lonely.

Sometimes he found himself missing his father's servants, the maids, the drivers... just somebody who care about him. But he had estranged himself from all his family, and he didn't regret it, but now he was left with only a couple of friends. Betsy and Ororo were great, but they were also busy, and more bandmates than actual friends. Well, they were friends, but they just weren't there a lot of time. Which could suck specially when everything seemed to be going to shit and you had no one to tell you, “hey, it's going to be ok”.

He was deep in thought when someone appeared behind him.

“Need some help?” A soft, accented voice said.

“Not from you.” Was his automatic, instinctual response as he scrunched up the napkin in his hand. Why do you do this, Warren? The boy was just making conversation, and maybe he could actually help him with his composing crisis.

“Sorry, I.... Sit, let me get you a drink.We're supposed to do a new song for Friday, and it has to be epic because all eyes will be on us after that gig and I can't... seem... to do anything right.”

Kurt nodded, took the seat next to Warren's and ordered something called a Blue Hawaiian.

“Pressure is the worst, ja? Makes you feel unable to do things that others times come so easy.”

“You tell me. How do you do it, Wagner? You write the most impossible things. That one about the mutant pirate out of time? Masterpiece.”

Kurt blushed a bit.

“Vielen dank.”

“You're welcome. So? Tell me your secret.”

“No secret. I have a big imagination, I guess, I let all the possibilities that could happen happen. Jubilation helps me with the English and proposes ideas, sometimes. She's very nice.”

“These things just come to you. All the colourful music.” Warren seemed and was disbelieving. No one could have an imagination like that.

“I grew up in a circus, Warren. We were always trying to find new ways to amaze, new definitions of the fantastic, exploring the edge of the uncanny was our living.”

“No wonder your music is so weird.”

“But your house seems uncanny too! Twenty bathrooms? In the same place? For only three people and staff? Amazing!”

“How do you how many bathrooms were in my parent's house?”

Kurt giggled softly and took a sip of his drink.

“Nevermind... that. Why don't you show the song, maybe I can help you, guide you to find the uncanny within.”

Warren unfolded the napkin, looking at the smudged writing.

“It's about a demon who is left alone in hell... and I don't know, man, is it okay that I talk about this with you? I know you're very religious.”

“And how did you know that?” Kurt said, grinning. Maybe he wasn't the only one doing research on his spare time. Warren just looked away, so Kurt focused on the song. “It's all right, I know you aren't really satanists, you just use this figure to express your darkest designs and through them find relief... let's see... what if the demon decides to go out in the world, step away from hell?”

“Away from hell? It's not that easy to get away from there, and maybe there's a reason he was there in the first place. Maybe he deserves to be lonely.” The lines between the demons in his song and himself were blurring, but he was too drunk and too sleep deprived to even try to pretend this wasn't about him.

“What if he had some help? From a creature from earth, like... a mermaid or a nymph, who had been cast away too, because it was too different to fit in.... maybe because of a visible mutation? Maybe they had two tails.. and so the creature shows the demon the world, and the demon shows the creature hell... and maybe they laugh at the rest of people, because this is a metal song and you're supposed to be mean, right?”

“I like it! Yeah, maybe they were both cast out and looked upon as forces of evil, we need to put evil in like all of our singles, -I'm sorry,- and maybe, maybe they were, evil I mean, but that didn't mean they had wallow in their wretchedness... Maybe they could find beauty even in the most horrifying things and what others saw as pitch black had a bit of colour, as dark as it could be.”

“I like that.” Kurt said, smiling and looking at Warren in the eye. “I like that a lot.”

They stayed there for a while, talking about songs and concert anecdotes and annoying band mates and it was nice, peaceful, almost intimate, until after three blue hawaiians Kurt could hardly see straight. Warren took him home, even deposited him in the bed after he nearly passed out in his front door. It was really a sight to be seen. That night he slept wonderfully, with a smile. 

 

* * *

 

The next week came and gone, and Kurt didn't hear from Warren until Friday when Peter appeared from who-knows-where and smiled goofily at Kurt.

“I don't believe this.”

“What?”

“It's just... amazing. I mean after so many fights...It's a tune, no doubt about it, maybe the best they've ever recorded, I mean, the acoustics, the lyrics, and there's a lot of feeling in everyone's performance, I've heard like twenty times already and-”

“Peter! What is happening, what are you talking about?”

“Birdboy left this in your doorstep with a note. It's a love song.”

Kurt wasn't sure he could believe that, but he took the package. It was the Horsemen's new single, with a note written in familiar handwriting.

_“Vielen dank, Kurt. I wouldn't have made it without you._

_Next Blue Hawaiian is on me._

_Warren.”_

The song did have a touch of colour that other ones had lacked.

And it was called Ultramarine.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is suuuuper appreciated! Could be continued if anyone wanted. :)


End file.
